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Too Important to Smile Back: The 'Boss Effect'

By

Robert Lee Hotz

Updated Oct. 16, 2012 1:14 p.m. ET

Status and authority shape our facial expressions, turning even a simple smile into a power play, new research suggests.

New experiments, made public this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, credited lightning-quick social reflexes, ingrained in neural circuits, for determining when we smile.

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Want to Be the Boss? Don't Smile

Probing the power smile, brain researchers are discovering how status and authority shape our facial expressions. New research made public Sunday suggests the human face also is a mirror of office hierarchies. Lee Hotz has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images.